NSLog();

After a long absence from the scene, I'm finally going fishing tomorrow.

I've always found that I tend to function better and get more done when I have a very busy schedule. For example, when working five days a week, there was barely a week I didn't go fishing once or even twice. Since moving into the freelance world again on April 15, I've been fishing exactly two times, and one of those barely counts.

I find myself saying "I'll go tomorrow perhaps" without actually making plans, because somewhere I realize that I could go the day after that. This attitude reminds me of a sign I saw in a bar once that said "Free Beer Tomorrow." You'd come back the next day and right as rain the sign would still say the same thing.

This script, in combination with FTPeel's Magic Mirror feature, comes in quite handy:

set filepath to ""

tell application "BBEdit"
    save front document
    set filepath to file of front document
end tell

tell application "FTPeel"
    open filepath
end tell

I've saved it as shift-command-S (which BBEdit uses as "Save to FTP Server" anyway).

Update for BBEdit 8:

set filepath to ""

tell application "BBEdit"
    set thisFile to (active document of front window)
    save thisFile
    set filepath to file of thisFile
end tell

tell application "FTPeel"
    open filepath
end tell

I was reading this mini-rant against BBEdit when I read this:

I prefer SubEthaEdit. Its got everything I needed from BBEdit, and extra networking functionality (a couple of my mac buddies from school share and take notes together during class on our powerbooks)…

What a great friggin' idea! Holy cow!

Oh wait, I was the only person in most of my classes with a laptop, let alone one with an Apple on the lid. 😛

Question: What did you have for breakfast?

My Answer: One of my favorite breakfast foods, and a great way to start the day. You start by boiling apple juice in a pan or pot. Boil about 1/3 the volume of the amount you'd like to make, or boil 1/2 down to about 1/3. When it boils, turn off the heat and stir in enough cous-cous to soak up the apple juice. Add a good amount of honey and a variety of chopped fresh fruits. Today's list included purple seedless grapes, bananas (a staple in this breakfast for me), and peaches. Sometimes I'll use cherries, or apple chunks, or mangos. Strawberries, blueberries… you almost can't go wrong (except maybe with oranges, limes, and lemons). Mmmmm. It's sweet, it's warm, and it's fairly healthy (a little sugary, but, a good way to start the day).

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: What's the worst movie you've ever actually watched because a significant other wanted you to see it?

My Answer: All I have to say is "Could The English Patient be any more boring than it is?"

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I've still got a few Gmail invitations. To give them away, we'll have a simple contest: tell me your favorite post here on NSLog(); (and be serious) and "win" a Gmail invitation. I have two now, but I imagine I'll be restocked after they're gone. I'll send invitations in order of comment entry. If you don't want a Gmail invitation but wish to post anyway, please note that in your comment.

The chevrons (») seen in the titles on the main and individual pages here now function as "email a friend this article" links. Click them and you'll see what I mean. Here's the very simple code. The trickiest part was the "%0D" for carriage returns.

<a href="mailto:?subject=<?=str_replace(" ", "%20", "<MTEntryTitle>");?>
&amp;body=Hi,%0D%0DI%20thought%20you%20might%20find%20this%20interesting!%0D%0D
&lt;<MTEntryPermalink>&gt;%0D%0D" title="Email <MTEntryTitle> to Someone">&raquo;</a>

A snap!

Here is a picture that may shock you (and not because of the glass of straight up amaretto in the background):

What you see here are three bullets (and their casings). From the right, we have a CCI .22 LR Mini-Mag, used in my Ruger Mark II semiautomatic handgun with an UltraDot red dot scope. Next to it we find the standard 9mm Luger. Finally, far to the left, we see a .50 caliber round (yes, it's live) for use from a machine gun, primarily those mounted to helicopters and used in Vietnam or on today's Blackhawks. Lately, such bullets have been used for shooting competitions at 1,000 yards with 30 lb. rifles costing well over $2500.

The .22 means ".22 inches" and the bullet is a .22 caliber "long rifle" bullet. The description is as much marketing ("long rifle") as it is accurate (.22 caliber == .22 inches in this case). The 9mm Luger denotes both the size (9 mm = .354 in =~ .35 caliber) and the inventor (Luger), and most of my 9mm are 115 grain bullets (with smokeless powder). I shoot only FMJ (full-metal jacket) bullets, because I shoot indoors. Vaporized lead isn't the best thing to breathe in, I'm told. 🙂 The .50 caliber bullet is just that: .5 inches in diameter. It has a few more grains of powder and, well, it'll put a hole in someone as easily as it'll simply tear their arm off.

Contrary to what you may think after having watched The Jackal, the rather weak .22 is the preferred ammunition for actual hitmen. The little stingers are rather quiet, and they usually lack the power to penetrate more than one bone. This simply means that after breaking through one side of the skull, the bullets will ricochet around inside of the skull, making mincemeat of the grey matter inside.

Question: What is your preferred browser's favorite feature?

My Answer: It's easily the auto-fill capabilities, powered by Keychain. Very, very useful - saves me ten minutes or so each and every day.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

On July 21, I'll be heading back to Erie for a few days. Originally scheduled to return on the 27th, Expedia (grrrr) screwed up the booking. I'll now return on the 29th at, ugh, 6am or so. The purpose of my trip back? Five letters: C-A-R-E-Y.

Yes, things are going swimmingly! I'm in love, Carey is in love (with me, I think…), and we're trying to plan out some of the things we're going to do while I'm up there. We may head up to Niagara Falls, we may go to the Cleveland Zoo or to a Pittsburgh Pirates game (I've never been to the "new" stadium).

It's amazing, this whole "in love" thing. I'd forgotten what it felt like, having last fallen in love eight years ago, and it's refreshing, revitalizing, and re… uhh… really great. I liked Carey a lot back in high school, but I love her now. We've named our kids, we've picked out our homes (window shopping on realty sites), we've talked about how to raise them, how to stay together, how to have fun.

I feel like sighing now, so, ahhhhhhhhhh…

Steve Rubel wonders why there aren't more Apple bloggers. It's a fairly deep question, and one with which I am uniquely familiar having been almost fired for penning this post at 8:04am when the official announcement didn't come until 11am or so. Never mind that the store had been announced in Billboard, the LA Times, Wired, and other magazines and newspapers a week in advance.

For example, as several commenters have pointed out, it's a curious thing that David Hyatt can not only blog, but he can blog about unreleased, unannounced products, features, bug fixes, etc. He didn't blog about Safari's RSS capabilities, but he's talked quite openly about things he's fixed in Safari or WebCore/Kit. He's blogged about the underpinnings in unreleased (but announced) software (Dashboard), and he's done it all without unnecessarily endangering Apple's ability to innovate.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 514); »

Today I had to rebuild (or repair) my Entourage 2004 database for the fifth time after warnings came up while I performed a search. Each time I rebuild/repair my database, the categories (and thus colored labels) I've assigned to my folders disappear. Some random emails appeared or re-appeared after the rebuild as well, some as far back as July 8.

Furthermore, rebuilding the database markes every recipient as new, which greatly screws with Sync Entourage-Address Book. The script is awesome, but clearly Entourage puts itself at a major disadvantage when it can't even manage itself properly.

I have three POP accounts, all of which delete the mail on the server. I have only about eight or nine rules, and I use a SpamSieve rule after the first three (which no spam will ever match). I delete most of my mail and have about 1,500 emails maximum. In other words, I'm really not stressing the app too much.

Entourage 2004 may well be the flakiest email application I've ever used.

Question: Should the winning league of the All-Star game get home field advantage for the World Series?

My Answer: I say yeah, give those boys a little more to play for.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

1. Create a smart album in iPhoto 4.0.1
2. Make the criteria "Title contains abcxyz123" (or some other such nonsense, including a valid title)
3. Observe that iPhoto lists every damn photo in the "smart" album.

Seems to work fine for some people, though.

Completely having failed to find any inspirational shooting range websites (or bowling alley sites, which I figured would be similar in content and presentation), I've struck out on my own and created a pair of mockups for the Palm Beach Shooting Center. A plain text Web site would be better than their existing one, so, I can't do any worse, but I encourage feedback and criticism:

Mockup 1 and Mockup 2

The .psd, should you wish to submit feedback or ideas by mucking around and sending the file back to me, is available at this location (3.3 MB, and if you're reading this page at some point after July 20, 2004, it most likely will have been deleted).

I'm shooting (pun intended) to get this mockup done by Friday. No work will be used without permission (and, depending on the terms, some form of payment or acknowledgement). Comments will be used free of charge. 🙂